Boredom Belied
by Extant
Summary: A character study in Sherlock, written in the first person... because when people say something is hard, I just have to try it. :) Could be read as Johnlock, or just Sherlock being his usual nosey, analytical self. Depends on what you bring to it.


**A/N: **_This has been sitting on my computer for a YEAR. :P I kept reading everyone talk about how difficult it was to write from Sherlock's point of view, as he's so intelligent and enigmatic. So one day when I needed a writing warmup, I gave it a shot. I wasn't intending to go anywhere with it. It was just a random character exercise. No plot here._

_I only just rediscovered the thing this past weekend and was surprised to find I still liked it. (Usually I go back and read stuff I wrote a year ago and it makes me want to stab myself through the eye with a pencil.) I think it's a little OOC, but I don't think you can really capture Sherlock's mind in a one-shot. It's too complicated. But I feel its a decent attempt._

_Let me know what you think. I'm expecting a wide variety of opinions on this. :)_

* * *

**Boredom Belied**

"I'm bored!"

I'm not, actually. It's rather impossible for me to be bored. Having no case on doesn't mean there is no work to be done.

But you don't know that.

There is the _effect of enzymes on the putrefaction of flesh _experiment in the kitchen. You haven't noticed that I nicked tonight's beef for it yet. It's only breakfast time; the tea was in the cabinet and the bread was in the box. You haven't opened the fridge this morning, but something like a bee stuck in between my lungs trembles in anticipation of when you do. This is the third time I've misappropriated dinner in the last two weeks. I'm not entirely certain what your reaction will be, and the temptation to casually prompt you to look in the fridge now is something almost solid on my tongue and I have to swallow back the words.

So, really, that's two experiments there.

Not to mention the enormous backlog of unembarked experiments listed in my brain.

There is Bach's violin partita No. 1, which I really must practice. Mycroft will be by this week, likely Thursday if the Polish parliamentary session goes well. He says it sounds like Schrodinger's cat scrabbling to get out of the box. He hates it.

It will sound poor enough if I don't practice it, but to _truly _find the wretchedness in it, to harness it's full torturous power one must study how to play it badly, just which notes to twist until the ear writhes.

He was always more particular to Chopin.

I hate Chopin.

There are the three new books on North American fungi sitting on the floor beside the couch. Unidentified spores have been showing up in certain forensics reports over the last six months. (I estimate Lestrade will discover I took the folder off his computer within five to seven days. He should thank me for looking into this. He won't. I don't quite understand why. Further proof he is an idiot, I suppose.) Hurricanes on the American gulf have been more severe this year than in the last few decades, pushing further up the coast. I expect, given the climate, these are spores from Louisiana – perhaps Florida – deposited by the storm in an Eastern port city and carried here in contaminated shipping containers. All of London will be infested soon. I must compare the samples against the geographic distributions in the texts and identify the alien species.

My fingers brush against the topmost cover as I dangle an arm off the side of the couch. But I resist the pull to pick one up and start eliminating possibilities.

Then there are the books on the shelves to the left of the fireplace, that haphazard pile protruding from the lip of the third shelf up, the ones on cold cases from the first half of the last century. They are usually missing too much information for me to be able to come to any definite conclusions, but occasionally there will be an unwittingly brilliant photograph, or a key quote from an interested party. And it's always fun to try.

And there's the stack on the side table underneath your mug and yesterday's paper and last month's bills and a Tesco receipt you dropped there absentmindedly (it had been in your hand when you brought up the post). Tomes on human psychology, because if I can't intuit the emotions that might lead to a crime of passion (or drive Anderson to be such a twit, or those littlest expressions that pass across your face that I can't read), perhaps I can at least deduce them analytically if I can just find the patterns.

Except that I used you as a case study as I worked my way through the first book. Halfway through I was ready to toss it out the window. Total rubbish. It didn't explain you at all.

But then again, you've never been quite textbook. Perhaps I should have picked a different subject to start with.

For now, I'm leaving them where they are. Three months and it still makes Mycroft's eyebrow furl every time he comes over. He's trying to figure out what I'm doing with them. I rearrange them occasionally, stick papers between the pages, set a nubby pencil on the side to make it look like they've been perused at length. My giddy eyes should really have given away by now that I'm playing a trick on him, but it only seems to confuse him more.

I should order another to add to the stack, just to elevate his perplexity.

So, you see (except you don't), I have no case, but I have a hundred plots afoot. I have never been - could never _be -_ bored.

But you are.

Ever the soldier. You don't like to sit still. As much as you protest otherwise, given an hour to do nothing you'll last maybe thirty minutes on the outside. It's an instinct, to some degree innate, recognized and methodically honed into you since the minute you set foot on base as a recruit, and reinforced time and again by the sheer need to survive, until it became as route as blinking: a deep-seated unease with being unoccupied, with not constantly doing _something_, not fighting – or if you can't do that, at least preparing for the moment when you will. It starts as a twitch in your brow. You try to read the paper, but you can't quite concentrate on the words. Then it's a tension in your shoulders, and you shake the paper to straighten it – any excuse to move - and clear your throat. Now your legs twinge in sympathy, and you shift from one hip to the other, cross your legs, uncross them, reposition your foot, flip to the next page though you haven't finished the first one, but your eyes don't quite focus because you're already groping in your mind for what it is you feel like you should be doing, and your fingernails are pale as your grip tightens on the newsprint...

You need to do _something._ Anything. Put your house in order. Fix equipment damaged in the last battle. Clean your gun. Count your ammo. Inventory your medical supplies. Calculate how you'll have to ration the food if the next convoy gets cut off.

But it's been four full days without a case now, and you've already done all that. Other than the stacks of research materials I've forbidden you to touch, the flat is obnoxiously spotless (Mycroft will be far too pleased; you do realize this, don't you?). You polished your gun yesterday, and the cabinets are stocked.

You can't stand it.

So you'll go out. To a bar, likely. Perhaps a cafe – it's only Tuesday. You'll wear that "lucky" navy jumper – the one that enhances the Rayleigh scattering of the short-wave end of the visible spectrum in the stroma of your eyes – and go sit at a table by yourself. Perhaps you'll bring a book with you. Or you'll gaze up at the news as you sip your pint.

After that point I'm not quite sure how it works. Even though I've spied on you once or twice. (You would be furious. Does it count if I'm still completely unenlightened?)

Invariably some woman will meander over, sit next to you at the bar, brush elbows with you at the counter, conveniently "forget" the change for her drink or spill the thing altogether and you'll jump in to rescue her. You'll smile, and she'll smile, and somehow you end up at a table together.

It would all be rather predictable, except that I can't for the life of me understand what they see in you. They don't see you with your Browning in hand, dashing down slick alleyways, or up to your elbows in a victim's blood, or staring down a murderer and half the Yard and my brother all in one go. In fact, when they do, they seem to abhor it, despite all the stereotypes about women being attracted to men in dangerous occupations (must be hyperbole). So how a drink and a marked glance turn into them hanging around for _months_ is rather unclear to me.

And they do hang around, don't they? Like those damned fruit flies in the kitchen after that one rather unfortunate experiment, hovering and swarming in your face the minute you walk into the room. It took weeks to get rid of them all.

But you never misrepresent yourself, not intentionally.

So who do they think you are?

I'm missing something here.

You never prattle like a man in love. If I learn their names at all (and why bother?) it's only because you drop it into conversation – usually on your way out the door - without realizing it's the first time you've said it. "I'm going to Sarah's." "I'm meeting Jeanette."

You never look like a man in love either. You exhibit none of the usual symptoms at the mention of them – an elevated pulse, increased respiration, a suffusion of blood to the capillaries of the face and neck. You don't come back to the flat looking smitten. Only vaguely mollified, the way you look after you've thoroughly hoovered the sitting room. A job well done.

Ah... Because that's what you're doing, isn't it? You're putting her house in order. Cleaning up from whatever battles she's been through. Standing watch. Calculating the strategic coordination of all the resources and positioning and maneuvers needed for a lifetime.

Inevitably you'll break up, always in the middle of a case. You'll get distracted. You'll forget her. She'll hate you.

But you're never very upset.

Because you never really wanted her at all.

You wanted the objective.

Duty.

Honor.

Loyalty.

Terrible ideas, all of them. God and Queen and Country. Manipulative inventions (they must be; Mycroft spouts them constantly) to coerce you into doing something you would otherwise recognize as inanely stupid. Or which you _know_ is stupid, but you do anyways.

Like Afghanistan.

What are you apart from these things you do at others' command? I want to see, but I can't find the edge to peel it back. Do you even know? Do you long for duty because you know what lies underneath it, or because you don't?

You are _itching_ for an objective right now.

I will give you one.

"I _said_, 'I'm _booored_.'"

You snap the wrinkles out of the paper and hold it up just a bit higher, as if blocking the sight of me somehow blocks up your ears as well. For a moment I'm glad you can't see - the corner of my mouth is twitching. In anyone else this would be pure idiocy; but you are a doctor, so there is a level of irony here.

And you know it.

"_Johhnn..."_

The bottom of the paper crumples on your knees as you drop it low enough to glare at me over the top.

"Yes, I heard you the first time!"

You're irritated. Or you think you are. Or you're pretending to be. Your brows are drawn together and you're positively scowling.

But a little rush of victory blooms beneath my ribcage.

You are absolutely still for the first time in days.

It is too tempting to resist.

I peer disdainfully into the teacup you sat beside the fungi field guides an hour ago. I haven't touched it yet. The brew is cold now, but you won't think of that.

"Is there any milk in the fridge?"

* * *

**A/N: **_"Thoroughly hoovered the sitting room," is now officially the worst innuendo in the history of mankind. Thank you, thank you very much._

_Reviews and critiques welcome._


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